This invention relates to a belt buckle, specifically to a belt buckle for promotional and novelty use with a replaceable backlit face plate.
Wearable media such as belt buckles, buttons, T-shirts, baseball caps are commonly adorned with logos or slogans of favorite sports teams, popular companies and local events for promotional and novelty reasons. A disadvantage of these media is that the logo or slogan is fixed in the media and cannot be readily changed. A further disadvantage of these media is that they lack the ability to draw a potential target's attention to the logo or slogan.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,379,493 and 3,969,836, expressly incorporated herein, disclose belt buckles with replaceable ornamental face plates. That patent, however, relates to a belt buckle for purely ornamental purposes, and lacks backlighting that may draw attention to the faceplate.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a belt buckle for promotional and novelty use with a face plate which may be readily replaced with another face plate bearing a different logo or slogan. It is a further objective of the present invention to provide backlighting for the face plate which flashes intermittently in order to draw attention to the displayed logo or slogan.
The belt buckle is designed using an injection molded plastic case with a removable end piece so that different face plates can be easily inserted into the belt buckle. When the face plate is in place, the end piece secures the face plate to the buckle.
It is a still further advantage that customized face plates can be fabricated at an extremely low cost and quick turnaround which promotes replacement of the face plates.